Department of Pillaging and Thievery

The "violation" tag has flipped up on a pair of parking meter collectors suspected of bilking the city of San Francisco out of up to as much as $5,000 a week.

The two work for Serco, the company under contract to collect coins from the city's parking meters, and were caught Monday with $500 worth of spare change, investigators said.

"You should have seen the bag -- it must have weighed 75 pounds,'' said one worker who witnessed the pair being hauled in by the police.

Maggie Lynch of the Department of Parking and Traffic said the two workers, whom she identified as John Chann and Roth Ham, had been charged with felony grand theft, embezzlement and conspiracy.

"The investigation started a while back when it was noticed that there were discrepancies between what was being collected on a daily basis," Lynch said. "One crew would come back with one amount, and this crew would come back with a lot less.''

After going back over collection records, a pattern seemed to emerge with losses of between $1,000 and $5,000 a week.

The cops were brought in with cameras rolling and apparently caught the pair in the act.

Muni Director Michael Burns, whose agency oversees Parking and Traffic, said the city would pursue criminal and civil cases against the two employees. Neither one could be reached for comment Tuesday night.

This wouldn't be the first time silver-snatching workers had made off with some serious coin. In March, investigators hauled nearly a half a ton of coins out of a Muni fare box technician's home in Lafayette.